EN ANNEX CONNECTING EUROPE FACILITY (CEF) TRANS-EUROPEAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS ... · 2015-11-25 · TRANS-EUROPEAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS WORK PROGRAMME 2015 . 2 Contents

EN

ANNEX

CONNECTING EUROPE FACILITY (CEF)

TRANS-EUROPEAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS

WORK PROGRAMME 2015

2

Contents

1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 5

2 CONTEXT, OBJECTIVES AND OVERALL APPROACH ..................................... 6

2.1 Context .............................................................................................................. 6

2.2 Objectives, medium-term perspective and expected results .............................. 6

2.3 CEF Telecommunications Work Programme 2015 .......................................... 8

2.3.1 Eligibility criteria and approach .......................................................... 8

2.3.2 Work Programme content overview .................................................... 9

2.3.3 Indicative budget ............................................................................... 10

2.3.4 Implementation mechanisms ............................................................. 12

3 CONTENT OF THE CALLS FOR 2015 .................................................................. 13

3.1 Digital Service Infrastructures ......................................................................... 13

Well-established DSIs ...................................................................................... 13

3.1.1 Access to digital resources of European heritage – Europeana ......... 13

3.1.2 Safer Internet ..................................................................................... 16

Mature DSIs which have previously been supported under CEF and

for which additional funding is foreseen under WP 2015 ................. 19

3.1.3 Electronic identification and authentication —

eIdentificantion and eSignature ......................................................... 19

3.1.4 Electronic delivery of documents — eDelivery ................................ 21

3.1.5 Electronic Invoicing - eInvoicing ...................................................... 22

3.1.6 Access to re-usable public sector information - Public Open

Data .................................................................................................... 24

3.1.7 Automated Translation ...................................................................... 26

3.1.8 Cyber Security ................................................................................... 29

'New' Mature DSI's selected on the basis of the criteria established by

the Regulation .................................................................................... 31

3.1.9 Access to certificates and attestations – e-Certis

(eProcurement) .................................................................................. 31

3.1.10 Online Dispute Resolution ................................................................ 33

3.1.11 eHealth ............................................................................................... 36

3.2 Broadband ........................................................................................................ 41

4 IMPLEMENTATION ............................................................................................... 44

4.1 Main implementation measures and EU financial contribution ...................... 44

4.2 Procurement ..................................................................................................... 44

4.3 Calls for proposals ........................................................................................... 44

4.3.1 General terms and provisions ............................................................ 44

4.3.2 Making a proposal ............................................................................. 45

4.3.3 Evaluation process ............................................................................. 45

4.3.4 Selection of independent experts for evaluation and reviews ........... 46

4.3.5 Indicative implementation calendar .................................................. 46

3

4.4 Technical assistance for broadband ................................................................. 46

5 PROGRAMME SUPPORT ACTIONS .................................................................... 48

5.1 Studies, other measures, conferences and events ............................................ 48

6 FURTHER INFORMATION .................................................................................... 49

ANNEXES ........................................................................................................................ 50

Annex 1 – Call for proposal fiches ............................................................................ 50

Annex 2 - Evaluation criteria for the Calls for Proposals ......................................... 51

Annex 2a. Award criteria for the grant to the World Bank on the basis of

Article 190(1)(f) of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No

1268/2012 ........................................................................................................ 55

Annex 3 – Conformity with the legal base ................................................................ 57

4

1 INTRODUCTION The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) was established by Regulation (EU) N°

1316/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 20131 (CEF

Regulation). It determines the conditions, methods and procedures for providing

European Union (EU) financial assistance to trans-European networks in order to support

projects of common interest. It also establishes the breakdown of resources to be made

available for the period 2014-2020. It covers the sectors of transport, telecommunications

and energy.

In accordance with Article 17 of the CEF Regulation, the Commission has to adopt, by

means of implementing acts, multiannual and annual work programmes for each of the

sectors concerned. In doing so, the Commission must establish the selection and award

criteria in line with objectives and priorities laid down in Articles 3 and 4 of the CEF

Regulation and in Regulations (EU) No 1315/2013 and (EU) No 347/2013 or in the

relevant guidelines for trans-European networks in the area of telecommunications

infrastructure.

Guidelines for trans-European networks in the area of telecommunications infrastructure

(CEF Telecom guidelines) were adopted on 11 March 20142 and cover the specific

objectives and priorities as well as eligibility criteria for funding envisaged for broadband

networks and digital service infrastructures.

The CEF Telecom guidelines define ‘telecommunications infrastructures’ as both

broadband networks and digital service infrastructures (DSIs). The latter are composed of

‘core service platforms’ – central hubs which enable trans-European connectivity – and

‘generic services’ which link national infrastructures to the core service platforms.

Finally, ‘building blocks’ are basic DSIs which enable the more complex digital service

infrastructures to function properly.

This document constitutes the 2015 Work Programme (WP2015) for CEF

Telecommunications (CEF Telecom). It outlines the general objectives and the priorities

for actions to be launched in 2015 and explains how these can be tangibly achieved

through the selected digital service infrastructure and broadband projects. It defines the

scope of the programme as well as the envisaged level of funding, which will take the

form of procurement, calls for proposals and other supporting actions.

Financial instruments for broadband and additional technical assistance for broadband

will be covered in a separate joint work programme for all three sectors of the CEF.

For further information relating to this programme, please refer to the CEF Telecom

website at https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/connecting-europe-facility.

1 Regulation (EU) No 1316/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2013 establishing

the Connecting Europe Facility, amending Regulation (EU) No 913/2010 and repealing Regulations (EC) No

680/2007 and (EC) No 67/2010.

2 Regulation (EU) No 283/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2014 on guidelines for

trans-European telecommunications networks and repealing Decision No 1336/97/EC

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/connecting-europe-facility

5

2 CONTEXT, OBJECTIVES AND OVERALL APPROACH

2.1 Context

Our economies and societies are undergoing a profound transformation with the Internet

becoming the dominant platform for communication, for business and for participation in

social and political life. The trans-European availability of widespread and secure access

to the Internet and digital services is essential for the functioning of the digital single

market and for Europe to reap the full benefits of this technological revolution.

The Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE)3, one of the flagship initiatives of Europe 2020,

has recognised that information and communication technology (ICT) and network

connectivity form an indispensable basis for the development of our economies and

society. It sets the objective of all Europeans having access to fast broadband speeds of

30Mbps, with at least half of European households subscribing to Internet connections

above 100Mbps, by the end of the decade.

Europe needs to make better use of the opportunities of the digital technology and

facilitate cross-border interaction between public administrations, businesses and

citizens. It needs to stimulate the deployment and modernisation of high-speed internet

networks. While many Member States have already introduced digital service

infrastructures that drive competitiveness and markedly improve the daily lives of their

citizens, there is currently a lack of interconnection and interoperability among such

systems at European level.

The Connecting Europe Facility is aimed at supporting projects of common interest that

address such bottlenecks and thereby contribute to the development of the Single Market,

to European competitiveness, to social inclusion and to overall economic growth. By

supporting the deployment of solid trans-European infrastructures based on mature

technical and organisational solutions, CEF is expected to foster the deployment of

networks and stimulate exchanges and collaboration with (and within) the public sector,

across the EU. This will necessarily entail buy-in and active cooperation between

administrations in different Member States building on cross-border technical

interoperability.

2.2 Objectives, medium-term perspective and expected results

Objectives

The objectives of EU action as regards trans-European telecommunications networks are

outlined in the CEF Telecom guidelines. Article 3 thereof defines the specific objectives

as pursuing:

– economic growth and support to the completion and functioning of the internal

market in support of the competitiveness of the European economy, including

small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

– improvements in daily life for citizens, businesses and administrations at every

level through the promotion of broadband networks, interconnection and

3 http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/

6

interoperability of national, regional and local broadband networks, as well as

non-discriminatory access to such networks and digital inclusion.

It also lists the following operational priorities:

– interoperability, connectivity, sustainable deployment, operation and upgrading of

trans-European digital service infrastructures, as well as coordination at European

level;

– efficient flow of private and public investments to stimulate the deployment and

modernisation of broadband networks with a view to contributing to achieving

the broadband targets of the Digital Agenda for Europe.

Projects of common interest will, in particular:

– aim at the creation and/or enhancement of interoperable and, whenever possible,

internationally compatible core service platforms, accompanied by generic

services for digital service infrastructures;

– provide efficient investment vehicles for broadband networks, attract new

categories of investors and project promoters, and encourage replicability of

innovative projects and business models.

Expected results and the medium-term perspective

CEF Telecom is designed to deploy service infrastructures across the EU based on

mature technical and organisational solutions to support exchanges and collaboration

between citizens, businesses and public authorities. CEF focuses on providing

functioning services which are ready to be deployed and which will be maintained over

time, as opposed to developing pilots or technologies.

In the field of broadband, financial assistance will focus on attracting additional

investments, promoting a multiplier effect, and so facilitating the efficient use of private

and other public funds for investment.

The vision for CEF Telecom is that by 2020 it will deliver concrete benefits to citizens,

businesses and administrations across the EU through mutually reinforcing and

complementary digital service infrastructures and broadband networks, making the

Single Market more effective and contributing to economic growth.

More specifically, this means for consumers that they will be able to benefit from lower

costs, better and quicker access to public services, public data and cultural information in

all Member States. The services will be safer, more secure and available in all EU

languages, and new faster broadband networks will support digital inclusion.

For businesses a successful CEF programme would mean more opportunities and better

cross border public services. It will become less time-consuming and less costly to

interact with public authorities. Transactions will be interoperable, secure and

trustworthy across Europe.

For administrations, CEF Telecom is expected to deliver greater efficiency and reduced

transaction costs across the different domains with all Member States participating fully

in cross-border activities.

7

CEF Telecom projects of common interest aim to be mutually reinforcing and

complementary. There are many potential linkages between the digital infrastructures; in

particular, building blocks such as e-Identification, eAuthentication, eDelivery,

eInvoicing or automated translation and cyber security enable the proper functioning of

all the other DSIs listed in the CEF Telecom guidelines.

Furthermore, DSIs must be financially sustainable over time, where appropriate through

funding sources other than CEF. Financial assistance should, wherever possible, be

phased out over time and funding from sources other than CEF should be mobilised,

where appropriate. Concrete scenarios as regards the continued financial sustainability of

individual DSIs are presented for each DSI.

The expected benefits and outcomes and the medium-term perspective are described in

more detail for each individual project in Section 3. Great importance will be attached to

the monitoring of performance and evaluation. Member States will need to be closely

involved in the monitoring of projects of common interest to ensure quality control and

ownership. This will be done through regular performance reviews whereby funding can

be discontinued if clear performance targets are not met.

2.3 CEF Telecommunications Work Programme 2015

2.3.1 Eligibility criteria and approach

Eligibility criteria

According to Article 6 of the guidelines, actions contributing to projects of common

interest in the field of digital service infrastructures must meet all the following criteria in

order to be eligible for funding:

– reach sufficient maturity to be deployed, as proven in particular through

successful piloting under programmes such as the EU programmes related to

innovation and research;

– contribute to EU policies and activities in support of the internal market;

– create European added value and have a strategy, which must be updated when

appropriate and the quality of which is to be demonstrated by a feasibility and

cost-benefit assessment, together with planning for long-term sustainability,

where appropriate through funding sources other than CEF;

– comply with international and/or European standards or open specifications and

orientations for interoperability, such as the European Interoperability

Framework, and capitalise on existing solutions.

Actions in the field of broadband networks must meet all the following criteria:

– make a significant contribution to the realisation of the targets of the Digital

Agenda for Europe;

– have sufficiently mature project development and preparation stages that are

underpinned by effective implementation mechanisms;

– address market failures or sub-optimal investment situations;

8

– not lead to market distortions or crowding out of private investment;

– use the technology which is deemed most suitable to address the needs of the area

in question, taking into account geographic, social and economic factors based on

objective criteria and in line with technological neutrality;

– deploy the technology best suited to the specific project, while proposing the best

balance between state of the art technologies in terms of data flow capacity,

transmission security, network resilience, and cost efficiency;

– have a high potential for replicability and/or be based on innovative business

models.

Horizontal actions have to meet either of the following criteria in order to be eligible for

funding:

– prepare or support implementation actions in their deployment, governance and

addressing existing or emerging implementation problems;

– create new demand for digital service infrastructures.

Approach

The current work programme has taken the above objectives and eligibility criteria fully

into account in setting the priorities for 2015. In particular, attention was paid to the

technical and operational maturity of the projects and the expressed preferences, level of

demand and preparation of the Member States as well as the extent to which the projects

create EU-level added value.

A study has been commissioned to independently assess the technical and organisational

maturity of all DSIs which were not included in WP2014 or were only included with

preparatory actions. The results of the study were made available in November and

contributed to the assessment and selection process.

Building blocks were given priority in the Work Programme over other digital service

infrastructures, since the former are a precondition for the latter. For instance, DSIs such

as eIdentification and eAuthentication are regarded as crucial building blocks

underpinning all other services. Similarly, core platforms are given precedence over

generic services.

Moreover, as a number of cross-border digital services implementing exchanges between

European public administrations in support of EU policies already exist, the selected

projects aim to capitalise on existing solutions implemented in the context of other

European initiatives and avoid duplication of work.

2.3.2 Work Programme content overview

The current work programme lists DSIs that are considered to meet the eligibility criteria

in 2015. They are divided into three groups:

– Those for which funding is identified in the CEF Telecom guidelines:

Europeana and Safer Internet. These are established and funding will ensure their

continued operation in accordance with the legal obligations.

– Mature DSIs which have already been supported under CEF in 2014 and for

which additional funding is foreseen in WP2015: eIdentification and

9

eAuthentication, eDelivery, eInvoicing, Open Data, Automated Translation,

Cyber Security.

– 'New mature DSI's' proposed on the basis of the criteria established by the CEF

Telecom Guidelines, for Work Programme 2015: eProcurement, Online Dispute

Resolution (ODR) and eHealth.

2.3.3 Indicative budget

The total estimated funding for the eleven DSIs and broadband technical assistance for

2015 amounts to EUR 84.5 M€ including the 2.94% contribution from EFTA countries.

The table below provides indicative 2015 funding for DSI projects and broadband

technical assistance as well as the split between core platforms and generic services for

the DSIs.

More detailed indications regarding the scope and duration of the funding are provided in

Section 3.

Budgetary figures given in this work programme are indicative. Unless otherwise stated,

final budgets may vary following the evaluation of proposals. The final figures may vary

by up to 20% with respect to those indicated in this work programme for the budgeted

activities.

10

1. Overview of DSI projects and their indicative funding for 2015.

Activity

Indicative

funding

WP 2015

(Euros)

Type of

action

Indicative

Duration Budget

line

Well established DSIs 09 03 03

Europeana Core Platform 10 million Call for

proposals

1

Safer Internet Generic

Services

16.2

million

Call for

proposals

2.5

DSIs already supported under CEF WP 2014 09 03 03

eIdentification Generic

Services 7 million

Call for

proposals

1

eDelivery Generic

Services 1 million

Call for

proposals

1

eInvoicing Generic

Services 7 million

Call for

proposals

1

Open Data Generic

Services 4.5 million

Call for

proposals

2

Automated

Translation Core Platform 8 million Procurement

3

Cyber Security Core Platform 7 million Procurement 3

New DSIs in WP 2015 09 03 03

eHealth Core Platform 7.5 million Procurement 4

Generic


Call for

proposals

4

ODR Core Platform 4.2 million Procurement 3

Generic

Services 1 million

Call for

proposals

3

eProcurement

(eCertis

Generic


Call for

proposals

1

Broadband infrastructures

Technical

Assistance 0.9 million

09 03 01

11

Programme Support Actions

Studies and

other support

0.975

million Procurement

09 03 03

Projects evaluations and

reviews

0.37

million

09 03 03

2.3.4 Implementation mechanisms

In the area of digital service infrastructures, core service platforms will be implemented

primarily by the European Union while generic services are to be implemented by the

parties connecting to the relevant core service platform. Investments in broadband

networks will be undertaken predominantly by the private sector, supported by a

competitive and investment-friendly regulatory framework. Public support to broadband

networks will be provided only where there is market failure or a sub-optimal investment

situation.

In accordance with the CEF Telecom guidelines, actions contributing to projects of

common interest in the field of digital service infrastructures will be supported by

procurement and/or grants.

On the basis of a call for expressions of interest, technical assistance will be provided to

broadband project promoters identified in the framework of Connected Communities

Initiative with a view to making projects ready for potential financial assistance under

CEF. Actions relating to broadband networks will be supported by financial instruments

and will be covered, together with broader technical assistance measures, in the separate

work programme, mentioned above.

EU financial support will take the form of:

– procurement, which will yield service contracts, and with the EU covering the

totality of the cost and owning the results and the related intellectual property and

exploitation rights;

– calls for proposals (grant agreements), whereby the EU provides a subsidy and

the beneficiaries retain control over their results. The Regulation stipulates that

EU funding under grants cannot exceed 75 % of the eligible cost. One exception

is the core service platform of Europeana which will be the subject of a call for

proposals with EU funding of up to 100 % of the total eligible cost, given the

specificities of the target communities and the fact that the Commission cannot

and does not intend to acquire the property and exploitation rights of the project’s

outputs.

– a grant awarded to the World Bank on the basis of Article 190(1)(f) of

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 1268/2012 on the rules of

application of Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 966/2012 of the European

Parliament and of the Council on the financial rules applicable to the general

budget of the Union to set up technical assistance facility for broadband.

For these instruments, well-established procedures and templates are in place. More

information is provided in Sections 3 and 4 below. Detailed information will be provided

in the call documentation.

12

3 CONTENT OF THE CALLS FOR 2015

3.1 Digital Service Infrastructures

This section provides an overview of the individual DSIs setting out what actions are

planned in WP2015 and the concrete benefits to citizens, businesses and administrations

that would be achieved. The DSIs must be seen as essential elements of a well-

functioning Digital Single Market (DSM). They provide key services to enable platforms

from across Europe to interconnect and to make them accessible and user-friendly and

therefore make the DSM work in practice. The WP indicates whether a DSI constitutes a

building block and when use is made of existing building blocks.

Well-established DSIs

3.1.1 Access to digital resources of European heritage – Europeana

3.1.1.1 Background and rationale

With only around 10 %4 of Europe’s cultural heritage digitised and the digitised

resources still lacking visibility, especially across national boundaries, more digitised

resources of relevance should be brought online, and their cross-border use and take-up

actively pursued. Digital resources of European heritage have a big potential to serve as

input for the Cultural and Creative Economy, which accounts for around 4% of EU jobs

and GDP, as well as providing a rich resource for education and research.

Launched as the common, multilingual access point to digital resources of European

heritage in 2008, Europeana (www.europeana.eu) currently provides access to just above

33 million objects from some 3,000 data partners across Europe. To realise its full

potential, the existing infrastructure must be maintained, enhanced and made more

visible, allowing more content holders to connect, developing the mechanisms,

relationships and processes to distribute improved data to where users are and enforcing

standards in interoperability of data, rights and models to facilitate re-use.

With support from CEF, Europeana should develop into a widely recognised platform of

services and resources, not only for metadata references, but also for access to cultural

content, tools and technologies, projects and other services.

This action contributes to the implementation of a number of intertwined policies,

including:

Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE), which recognises digitisation and online

accessibility as key areas for turning cultural heritage into an asset for individual

users and an important building block for the digital economy.

Commission Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural

material and digital preservation (October 2011) and related Council Conclusions

(EYC Council, May 2012), which challenge Member States to get more material

online and ensure the long-term preservation of digital material.

4 http://www.enumerate.eu/fileadmin/ENUMERATE/documents/ENUMERATE-Digitisation-Survey-2014.pdf

http://www.europeana.eu/

13

Europeana, which showcases the implementation of the recently revised Directive on

the re-use of Public Sector Information (June 2013), bringing museums, libraries and

archives within its scope.

3.1.1.2 Implementation WP 2015

Actions in WP 2015

Building on the existing infrastructure, CEF support is intended for the coordination,

maintenance and further deployment of Europeana's core service platform, and the

related membership/partnership programmes (e.g. the Europeana Network, cooperation

with social networks or other cultural websites). Actions need to address the full range of

issues indicated below, and follow on seamlessly from previous work:

enhance data and aggregation infrastructure to ensure preservation of access to the

content already accessible; improve data and metadata quality; enable the ingestion of

new content, seeking to represent Europe's heritage in all its diversity and balance

geographical spread; optimise interaction with aggregators;

ameliorate the search functionality, the presentation of query results and the

navigation system to provide the user with an attractive curated experience on the

portal and across all end-user channels branded Europeana;

improve content distribution mechanisms (API, mobile mechanisms and apps) to

maximise visibility and user engagement, create value for partners and accelerate

discoverability and use;

proactive outreach to new content holders to join Europeana, with more openly

accessible data, fostering their active involvement;

improve/widen distribution channels through strong relationships and joint ventures

with a broad range of stakeholders, in particular from re-user communities (e.g.

tourism, education or research distributors, apps developers and CCIs) to engage new

audiences;

provide relevant information on conditions for re-use, licensing services and/or direct

access to the content, develop case studies where copyright material is preventing

cross-border access and re-use, in order to foster the development of value-added

services and the innovative re-use of cultural assets;

clarify existing, and – where appropriate - develop new strategies, services and

business models to support sustainability.

The consortium should involve organisations with the necessary complementary

expertise to attain the above-mentioned outcomes.

Benefits and expected outcomes

The expected outcomes are efficient solutions for the trans-European accessibility of

digital resources of European heritage, to increase their cross-border visibility, use and

take-up, and to help raise awareness of and realise their full economic potential.

Connecting Europe by making its culture available for everyone enables users (whether

citizens, students, researchers or cultural/creative entrepreneurs) to find relevant material

from all across the continent. Standardising and making cultural resources held by

Europe’s memory organisations internet-accessible and exposing their collections to the

wider world in a user-friendly manner offers content creators and developers

14

opportunities to feed on a pan-European wealth of digitised resources for developing new

products and services, adding value to the collections and providing new user

experiences, in full compliance with copyright law.

Finally, in the long run, participation in Europeana offers cost savings for cultural

institutions (on standardisation and interoperability, data storage and transfer,

expenditure, know-how/cooperation) and represents an important potential for the

tourism industry in promoting cultural tourism. Better access to heritage information

attracts travellers, increases the length of stay and the related expenditure).

Operation and stakeholder involvement

As a distributed trans-European digital service infrastructure, Europeana is a joint effort

by Europe’s cultural institutions. The current central services are run by Europeana

Foundation in cooperation with a number of technology partners and aggregators.

The Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and

digital preservation5 (‘the Recommendation’) calls upon Member States to contribute to

the further development of Europeana. The Member States Expert Group on Digitisation

and Digital Preservation, which assists the Commission in monitoring progress with the

implementation of the Recommendation, provides a forum for involvement of the

Member States and their cultural institutions.

Financial sustainability

To complement CEF funding, Europeana will explore opportunities and develop business

models to progressively raise revenues, e.g. through premium membership schemes,

brokering of relationships between memory institutions and technology companies,

incubation of digital culture projects or fundraising.

Actions envisaged beyond 2015

Regulation (EU)259/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council on guidelines

for trans-European networks in the area of telecommunications infrastructure and

repealing Decision No 1336/97/EC7 provides that continuity of funding for Europeana,

as a well-established DSI which has already demonstrated its clear added value of action

at European level, should be ensured in the first years of this financial framework in

order to allow for uninterrupted and successful delivery of service at the same level as

provided for under the previous funding scheme. On 10 May 2012, the Council further

underlined the vital importance of ensuring long-term viability of Europeana, including

in terms of funding.

It is therefore intended to provide continued support for the core service platform of the

Europeana DSI also in 2016, taking into account budget availability, progress towards

sustainability and the resulting actual needs for the period of operation covered by such

support.

Type of financial support

5 OJ L 283, 29.10.2011, p. 39

15

It is intended to fund one multi-beneficiary grant in support of the Europeana core

service platform for a minimum duration of one year. The funding rate is up to 100% of

eligible costs.

Title: Access to digital resources of European heritage – Europeana

Indicative total budget for 2015:

EUR 10 million

Type of financial support: One multi-beneficiary grant in support of the Europeana core service platform

Funding rate: 100 % of eligible cost

Indicative duration of the action:

One year minimum

Indicative publication date Q4 2015

Proposals need to build on the existing Europeana infrastructure and follow on from previous work.

3.1.2 Safer Internet


The Internet has become the natural playground and place of encounter, learning and

creativity for young people. Children are going online at an ever younger age on a

diverse range of interconnected and mobile devices, often without adult supervision. As a

group, children have specific needs and vulnerabilities: they need accessible and

appropriate content and services; adequate protection and support from harmful content,

contact and conduct; and the digital skills to use the Internet and other online

technologies to their advantage, safely and responsibly.

The overall objective of the DSI is to deploy services that help make the Internet a

trusted environment for children by providing a platform to share resources, services and

practices between national Safer Internet Centres (SICs) and to provide services to their

users, including industry. All services will be accessed and delivered either at EU level or

via interoperable national SICs, which will form part of the initial platform and

infrastructure.


Actions in WP 2015

The specific objective in 2015 is to continue supporting generic services provided by

Safer Internet Centres in all the MS, building on their interoperability with the EU core

platform and its services. The SICs will maintain and expand national platforms to run a

range of safer internet services providing:

1. An awareness centre for empowering children, their parents and teachers to make

the best use of the Internet, building on enhanced digital resource centres

(repositories), from which specific awareness toolkits and services will be adapted

and deployed, in cooperation with third parties (schools, industry).

Tasks for awareness-raising:

16

i. Devise informative awareness campaigns and resources targeting children,

parents, grand-parents, care-takers, teachers and social workers on how to

give children the digital skills and tools they need to take advantage of the

internet and to navigate safely online, promote awareness of parents and

children on online quality content and experiences, and make the associated

resources available through their services;

ii. Engage with children and young people from different demographic groups

by setting up a youth platform, including organising regular youth

participation activities, allowing them to express their views and pool their

knowledge and experience of using online technologies.

iii. Evaluate the impact of the awareness campaigns on the target groups and

provide qualitative and quantitative feedback at European level through the

core service platform;

iv. Establish and maintain partnerships and promote dialogue and exchange of

information with key players (government agencies, ISPs, industries, user

organisations, education stakeholders) at national level.

2. Online helpline services for reporting and dealing with harmful contact (eg

grooming, online abuse), conduct (e.g. cyberbullying, hate speech, sexting) and

content online.

Tasks for helplines:

i. Offer one-to-one conversations, online and on telephone, with trained

helpers in real time to give advice and support to parents and children on

issues related to their use of online technologies;

ii. Draw up operating guidelines in compliance with national law, including

data protection rules;

iii. Ensure that reporting mechanisms are interoperable both with the core

platform and with reporting via service providers such as Social

Networking Services;

iv. Provide qualitative and quantitative feedback at European level through

the core service platform.

3. A hotline for receiving and managing reports and data on online illegal child sexual

abuse material.

Tasks for hotlines:

i. Establish and/or operate a hotline, accessible by PC and mobile devices, to

receive information from the public relating to illegal content of child

pornography, and if deemed appropriate racism and xenophobia;

ii. Draw up a manual of procedures in cooperation with law enforcement

authorities and in accordance with best practice guidelines;

iii. Cooperate with the network of hotlines and fully use and connect to the

technical infrastructure provided by the EU core service platform;

iv. Undertake a preliminary assessment of the legality of the content reported

and trace its origin, and forward the report to the body for action (ISP, the

police or corresponding hotline) including systematic notice to the host

provider of content assessed as child pornography and monitoring of the

take-down; forward suspicions of illegal content to certain stakeholders

(ISP, the police or corresponding hotline) for further assessment;

17

v. Ensure compatibility with data formats of the EU core service platform

and provide statistics required for measuring the impact and effectiveness

of the network (e.g. time of removal of the illegal content).

The three components of the SIC will be expected to cooperate by setting up a single

Advisory Board with national stakeholders and actively contribute to the implementation

of a European approach by sharing good practices and resources and taking part in

European-level events.


The ultimate user beneficiary is the citizen, primarily children, who because of increased

awareness and empowerment strategies will be given the possibility to improve their

digital skills and be active and create in a safer digital environment, and to get better

choice of quality content and active experiences specifically designed for them,

supported by greater protection. Parents, care-takers, teachers and professionals working

with children at risk are key intermediaries who will be able to have a higher level of

understanding and trust in the way in which content and services are accessed and used

by children. Industry stands to benefit from increased market opportunities for content

and for impact of awareness campaigns, and from cross-border provision of associated

services (helplines, hotlines) and of child-rated content.


The EU core service platform will build on existing functions with regard to the

transactions between hotlines and their core operation; the maintenance of shared data

and image files, the support databases analysing helpline transactions and the access to

shared resources and repositories. It will also link to other established platforms for

learning resources in order to enhance the availability and use of e-Safety material for

children.

Member States will be actively involved in the implementation and deployment process

of the generic services provided through the national SICs. The governance structure of

the DSI as a whole will reflect the roles of Member States, of industry, and the EC. This

will be met through an executive group from the SICs, their coordinating

networks/associations, and the EC, with input from an MS expert group that will be

established to monitor the policy indicators resulting from the Safer Internet policy

benchmarking study tasked by DG CNECT.

This is a well-established, multi-stakeholder domain, involving public sector, technology

and media industry and civil society (mainly NGOs). Relevant stakeholders at the

national level will continue being involved through the Advisory Boards set up by the

SICs and as operational capacity is developed, it is foreseen that stakeholders will get a

more active role in the national implementation of the services.


In the short-term the CEF programme will fully fund the EU core service platform and

co-fund the related generic services. Direct CEF funding is expected to progressively

decrease, although the long-term financial sustainability will to some extent have to

depend on EC funding because it is unlikely that the concerted European effort for cross-

border sharing of resources and practices will happen without this. Also, EC-funding at a

certain level will offer to the public a benchmark of objectivity and trustworthiness.

18

Additional funding could take the form of in-kind services as well as cash contributions

from public and private sector partners. Three major approaches could be considered: 1)

structural approach with the objective to consider some possibilities with specific

companies, asking them how they could earmark some revenue to be injected in certain

activities to be developed by the platform; 2) project-based activities organised within

PPPs and based on existing models; 3) offer consultancy-based services, whereby

validation services could be offered on a pricing basis.

Strategies and business models as regards sustainability will be developed in the course

of 2015/2016.


It is intended to co-fund the generic services through grants covering the period of 30

months. The funding rate is up to 50% of eligible costs.

Title: Safer Internet generic services – for making a better and safer internet for children


EUR 16.2 million

Type of financial support: Call for proposals - grants

Funding rate: 50% of the total eligible costs


30 months

Indicative publication date : Q3 2015

Mature DSIs which have previously been supported under CEF and for which

additional funding is foreseen under WP 2015

3.1.3 Electronic identification and authentication — eIdentificantion and

eSignature


Under the heading 'Electronic identification and authentication – eIdentification and

eSignature' the CEF Telecom Work Programme 2014 launched the eID and eSignature

building block DSIs providing funding for the core service platforms of these DSIs until

the end of 2017. The provision of such services can now benefit from the new regulatory

framework of eIDAS6.

In 2014, CEF Telecom similarly supported generic services for the setting up and

maintenance of Pan-European Proxy Services (PEPS) or Virtual Identity Providers (V-

IDP) as well as for the integration of the eID DSI in existing online platforms.

6 Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014

19

However, the uptake and use of the eID DSI still needs to be promoted.


Actions in WP 2015

To promote the uptake and speed up the use of the eID DSI amongst both public and

private entities established in the EU and EEA countries participating in the CEF

Telecom programme, generic services will be supported through grants under the 2015

budget with the purpose of integrating the eID in an existing e-service/system/online

platform.


The objective is to increase uptake and use of the eID DSI by supporting Member States

in meeting the requirements of the new eIDAS regulation with a view to facilitating the

access of citizens and businesses to public and private services across borders throughout

the European Union and the EEA.


With regard to the core service platform set up under WP 2014, the Commission services

are in charge of the operation and maintenance work related to the DSIs as such. Member

States play an active role in the implementation and deployment process, in particular to

facilitate and accelerate widespread acceptance and use. The detailed short and medium

term governance set-up is currently being discussed, However the governance structure

will consist of representatives of the Member States and the relevant Commission

services. Cooperation with a selected cross-section of service providers and users is

foreseen. The group of stakeholders is expected to extend to standardisation bodies and

additional stakeholders, in particular in relation to specific policies or application

domains. The action shall be coordinated with the activities related to the eIDAS

implementation in order to avoid duplication of efforts and costs.


In regard to long-term sustainability of the core platform set up under WP2014, two

scenarios are presently being considered. In the first scenario, these Building Blocks

DSIs would be paid for through contributions from the DSIs using the services. This

would apply to both DSIs funded via the CEF and to DSIs funded via other sources. In

the second scenario, the operational costs of the core service platforms would be covered

by transactional revenues, plus possibly an annual service charge for the gateways.

Depending on the long-term governance set-up finally chosen, the services could

generate revenues exceeding the cost of operation by charging private sector users.


Grants are to be offered to consortia consisting of at least 5 entities from a single

Member State to integrate the eID DSI in an existing e-service/system/online platform to

enable citizens from any Member State to use her or his national eID to access public

services in the Member State of the consortium.

Title: Electronic identification - eID

Indicative total budget for 2015: EUR 7 million

20


Funding rate: 75% of the total eligible cost


1 year


3.1.4 Electronic delivery of documents — eDelivery


Under the heading 'Electronic delivery of documents - eDelivery' the CEF Telecom Work

Programme 2014 launched of the eDelivery building block DSIs providing funding for

the core service platforms of this DSIs until the end of 2017.

In 2014, CEF Telecom did not foresee support of generic services. However, the uptake

and use of the eDelivery DSI need to be promoted.


Actions in WP 2015

To promote the uptake and speed up the use of the eDelivery DSI amongst both public

and private entities established in the EU and EEA countries participating in the CEF


budget with the purpose of establishing access points.


The objective is to increase uptake and use of the eDelivery DSI by supporting the setting

up of additional access points throughout the EU and the EEA countries participating in

the CEF Telecom programme to link to the EU core service platform with a view to

supporting the cross-border exchange of electronic documents between such entities as

well as between such entities and citizens and businesses. The eDelivery DSI proposes a

gateway that can make a translation between national and European solutions in order to

guarantee transactions. The gateway should enable interoperability between the European

level and the level of the Member States regardless the standards in use within each of

them.


With regard to the core service platform set up under WP 2014, the Commission is in

charge of the set-up, operation and maintenance work. Member States play an active role

in the implementation and deployment process, in particular to facilitate and accelerate

the widespread acceptance and use. The detailed governance set-up is currently being

discussed. However the governance structure will consist of representatives of the

Member States and the relevant Commission services with the involvement of other

relevant stakeholders.


In respect to long-term sustainability of the core service platform set up under WP2014,

two scenarios are presently considered: in the first scenario, this building block DSI

21

would be financed through contributions from DSIs using the service, which would apply

to DSIs funded via the CEF as well as DSI funded via other sources; in the second

scenario, the operational costs would be covered by transactional revenues, plus possibly

an annual service charge for the gateways.

Type of financial support and proposed budget

Grants are to be offered to consortia consisting of at least 5 entities from one or more

Member State(s), for an indicative duration of one year.

Title: Electronic delivery of documents - eDelivery





1 year

Indicative publication date: Q3 2015

3.1.5 Electronic Invoicing - eInvoicing


Under the heading 'Electronic Invoicing - eInvoicing' the CEF Telecom Work

Programme 2014 launched of the eInvoicing building block DSIs providing funding for

the core service platforms of this DSIs until the end of 2017.

In 2014, CEF Telecom did not foresee support of generic services.

However, the uptake and use of the eInvoicing DSI need to be promoted.


Actions in WP2015

To promote the uptake and speed up the use of the eInvoicing DSI amongst both public

and private entities established in the EU and EEA countries participating in the CEF


budget with the purpose of putting solutions for the exchange of eInvoices in place.

The appropriate technical solutions and organisational set-up will have to be put in place

to make sure that in particular regional and local authorities can exchange eInvoices with

economic operators at an affordable cost for them. To foster interoperability between

Member States, preference will be given to solutions that are already on the market and

which allow cross-border exchanges of eInvoices. The preferred solutions should be

based on existing technical specifications developed within the framework of European

standardisation organisations such as CEN (CWA 16356-CEN MUG and CWA 16562-

CEN BII) and take into account the results of Large-Scale Pilot Projects implemented

within the framework of the Policy Support Programme of the Competitiveness and

Innovation Framework Programme (CIP). Moreover, other solutions which are based on

European or international standards in the domain of eInvoicing can also be considered,

22

provided that they envisage compliance with the above mentioned European standard

(EN) on electronic invoicing.


The objective is to increase uptake and use of the eDelivery DSI by supporting

authorities, especially regional and local authorities in meeting the requirements of the

new eInvoicing Directive7.


With regard to the core service platform set up under WP 2014, Member States are

actively involved in the implementation and deployment process, to ease and speed up

widespread acceptance and use, while the European Commission is in charge of the

operational management of the service. The detailed short and medium term governance

set up is currently being discussed. However, the governance structure will consist of

representatives of the Member States, the relevant Commission services and the relevant

stakeholders. The direct involvement of a representative cross-section of user

communities (buyers as well as sellers) is also considered.


With regard to the long-term sustainability of the core service platform set up under

WP2014, two scenarios are presently considered: In the first scenario, this building block

DSI would be paid through contributions from DSIs using the service, which would

apply to DSIs funded via the CEF as well as DSI funded via other sources. In the second

scenario, the operational costs would be covered by transactional revenues, as well as

possibly some business specific services and an annual service charge for the gateways.


Grants are to be offered to consortia consisting of at least 5 entities from one or more

Member State(s) composed of a majority of public entities, for an indicative duration of

one year.

Title: Electronic Invoicing – eInvoicing





1 year


7 Directive 2014/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on electronic invoicing in

public procurement, OJ L 133 of 6.5.2014, p. 1

23

3.1.6 Access to re-usable public sector information - Public Open Data

3.1.6.1 Background and Rationale

The overall objective of the Open Data service infrastructure is to help boost the

development of information products and services based on the re-use and combination

of open public data, across the EU.

Improved access to public sector information is an essential component of the EU

strategy for stimulating new business opportunities and addressing societal challenges,

with a huge but currently underexploited potential for cross-border and cross-sectoral

data re-use. While open data portals exist at national and sectoral levels, cross-border and

cross-sectoral synergies can only be achieved through the deployment of an infrastructure

at EU level. This infrastructure implements one of the key actions included in the

Commission communication on Open Data (COM(2011) 882 of December 2011,

underpinning Directive 2003/98/EC and its revision 2013/37/EU on the re-use of public

sector information (PSI).

The infrastructure providing Open Data digital services is based on two components, the

core service platform and the generic services supporting the creation and/or

harmonisation of content. The core service platform may make use of the Automated

Translation building block for facilitating the multilingual accessibility to metadata and

possibly data.

The Open Data infrastructure, through its pan-European portal, provides an interface for

accessing infrastructures distributed over a huge number of EU and MSs data

repositories. The infrastructure as such provides a technical platform for data discovery

and access, together with tools facilitating data transformation and exploitation.

The actions launched by the 2014 Work Programme initiated the deployment of a large

scale open date infrastructure at the European level, in particular in implementing a pan-

European Open Data portal, whose first version is scheduled to be available in the fourth

quarter of 2015. They also include assistance to administrations in EU Member States

and third countries in the implementation of open data policies and in particular

supporting the preparation of some high quality datasets to be published on their

respective data portals, in view of their eventual inclusion in the pan-European data

portal infrastructure.


Actions in WP 2015

In order to support a cross boundary harmonisation process, in parallel with the initial

implementation of the Open Data infrastructure taking place under the 2014 Work

Programme in 2015-2017, the specific objective of the 2015 Work Programme is to call

for generic services addressing the aggregation/harmonisation of datasets covering cross

border areas in priority domains. While this data harmonisation, for cost-benefit reasons,

may not be worth to be extensively applied at the EU level for every domain and

geographic coverage, it can be beneficial for specific geographic areas and/or domains.

This action will therefore complement and extend the support provided to data providers

by activities launched under Work Programme 2014, in particular addressing datasets

produced by public administrations at the national/regional/local level from different

Member States and covering cross-border areas.

24

Proposals need to address the issues listed below:

Facilitate the re-use of datasets belonging to the same domain and generated by

different authorities in cross-border areas, e.g. by harmonising their metadata

beyond the use of the same metadata model (minimum degree of harmonisation

provided by default by the pan-European Open Data portal) and possibly the data

themselves, e.g. through their aggregation, as well as by improving their overall

quality. Where appropriate, these same activities may also be proposed to be

applied to more than one of the priority domains mentioned below.

Address both technical and legal issues, therefore including the adoption of

harmonised conditions for re-use (be it through direct access or through a

provided service).

Address priority domains as defined in Commission notice 2014/C 240/01

"Guidelines on recommended standard licences, datasets and charging for the

reuse of documents"8, section 3.1 (i.a. in the domains of geospatial data, earth

observation and environment, transport, statistics, companies,etc)

Streamline the metadata/data production process and implement a sustainable

process to ensure long term maintenance of the harmonised datasets and

facilitating updates beyond their initial aggregation.

Liaise with ongoing activities (CEF Work Programme 2014, other EC funded

projects) already providing assistance for fostering uptake on public open data

supply.

The consortia should involve organisations with the necessary complementary expertise

to attain the above-mentioned outcomes, with a minimum of two public administrations

from two different Member States, directly or indirectly representing the data providers.

If appropriate the consortia may also involve data users and/or private sector

organisations (e.g. for providing technical support).


The improved availability of harmonised content at the EU level will facilitate its cross

border and cross domain re-use. Beneficiaries are the private sector, through the

development of value added services, and administrations at all levels of government,

through the streamlining of the production of interoperable content. Citizens will benefit

through increased transparency and availability of innovative services, as well as through

an expected increase in the efficiency of public services and administrations.


Member States will be involved through the Public Sector Information group and its sub-

group on open data portals, whose members are representatives of Member States and

relevant Commission services. Discussions initiated in 2014 will bring the group to

evolve to an extension possibly including leading user organisations and other domain

stakeholders. The process for the definition of a long term governance model will be

linked to the parallel definition of the business model required to guarantee the financial

8 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.C_.2014.240.01.0001.01.ENG

25

sustainability of the Open Data platform. The appropriate links with contributing

building blocks will be established.

Financial Sustainability

European funding for the deployment of the open data infrastructure is necessary to

initiate a structured process of data aggregation and harmonised cross border / cross

domain access at the EU level.

Once a critical mass of pan-European interoperable content becomes available, and the

expected benefits deriving from its availability will become evident, it should be possible

to progressively decrease EC funding for its operation and further extension, with support

from Member States (in-kind or direct) and possibly the private sector contributing to its

long term sustainability.

Long-term sustainability with no or much reduced funding for the core platform

operation and maintenance will be sought where possible. Funding for supporting content

provision, adaptation and transformation will be progressively reduced, in view of a

complete withdrawal or minimisation to specific domains from 2020 onwards. In the

long term the harmonisation process will lead to the generation of interoperable datasets

at the source, not requiring any further financial support for content creation and update.


Grants will be offered to consortia composed by a minimum of two public

administrations from two different Member States, for a duration of up to two years. The

funding rate will be up to 50% of eligible costs. Proposals requesting a contribution up to

EUR 0.5 million are expected. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and

selection of proposals requesting other amounts considered by the proposers appropriate

to the geographic and domain coverage of their proposal.

Title: Enhancement and aggregation of datasets and their harmonisation


EUR 4.5 million



Maximum duration of the action:

2 years


3.1.7 Automated Translation


The purpose of the Automated Translation building block is, on one hand, to provide

multilingual support to other pan-European DSIs so that citizens, administrations and

companies in all EU countries can use them in their own language, and, on the other, to

offer automated translation services to public administrations to facilitate cross-border

information exchange.

26

The main objective of actions programmed in 2015 is to launch the full core service

platform, to build on the user needs and requirements analysis delivered by 2014 actions,

to implement and adapt the automated translation services for selected CEF DSIs and to

extend work on language resource collection in the framework of the coordination

mechanism set up for this purpose by 2014 actions.


Actions in WP 2015

The existing IT infrastructure of the Automated Translation building block will be scaled

up by extending and adapting the existing MT@EC system architecture and by

purchasing additional hardware or cloud resources where parts of the service could be

moved to improve its performance and its efficiency. Also, MT systems and necessary

processing modules will be purchased and integrated. The MT engines will be adapted to

serve 2-3 more DSIs (up to 5-6 in total). The full-scale core platform will include a

language resource repository to host language resources needed to train, adapt and

support the MT systems.

Preparations will be made to extend the core platform by an domain adaptation facility, a

highly automated ‘factory’ that can produce translation engines for any domain and

context of use from available linguistic data, to serve language pairs and domains

relevant to current and future CEF DSIs.

The collection of language resources will be both broadened and deepened in order to

provide sufficient amounts of suitable resources to adapt the MT services to the needs of

5-6 DSIs and improve the quality of the MT output. The language resource coordination,

initiated in 2014, will be complemented by an IPR support and clearance helpdesk.


The expected benefits are three-fold: i) contribution to the realisation of the digital single

market by lowering language barriers; ii) effective roll-out and wider acceptance of pan-

European DSIs; iii) significant potential for savings in translation costs in the public

sector and higher level of security.


Member States will be actively involved in the implementation and deployment process.

They are also invited to contribute to the collection of language resources in order to

improve the quality of automated translation services for their respective languages. The

Commission services will be in charge of the operational management.

The governance group, set up under the WP2014, will include representatives from

national language competence centres and from stakeholder groups representing existing

language resource repositories and the leading users of the relevant DSIs, including

Member State administrations. This governance body will gradually be extended to

encompass appropriate representation of the language industry and language technology

experts.

The network of stakeholders and contributors of language resources in all EU Member

States will be broadened to effectively engage important actors beyond the public sector,

27

for example commercial providers, non-profit organisations, professional organisations

in the areas relevant to the DSIs.


There are three interlinked elements that provide for long-term sustainability:

a) In line with the principle of subsidiarity, the Member States have a direct interest and

also control over the level of service for their respective languages. As a counterpart,

the Member States are invited to provide access to existing language resources and

processing modules that allow their languages to be covered by the Automated

Translation service. By analogy, the DSIs that need Automated Translation support

are expected to provide access to language resources that they have accumulated and

provide support and input for the requirements analysis. This in-kind contribution

reduces the cost of acquiring and processing language resources, and allows CEF

funding to focus on supporting a coordinating mechanism and infrastructure for

pooling language resources from different sources.

b) The Automated Translation service can charge the users (DSIs or public

administrations) for automated translations, either based on actual translated volume

or by a flat-rate subscription fee. The fee structure will allow rebates or free use for

users that contribute to the operation or improvement of the Automated Translation

platform. For example Member States (or DSIs) providing language resources or

other in-kind contribution will benefit from ‘credits’ that they can use to pay for

using the Automated Translation service.

c) The automated translation facility will bring significant cost savings and/or increased

capacity to the EU institutions’ translation services, currently operating on a budget

of roughly EUR 1 billion a year. Similarly, the Member States’ public services may

make use of the translation service in their document production and achieve cost

savings. These savings can be converted to revenue by introducing fair and

transparent charging, along the lines outlined under point b above. The charging

against translations can be extended to third parties (non-CEF) interested in making

their online services multilingual, including, for example, eCommerce operators,

while ensuring equal and fair access to services for all operators and avoiding

distortion of the market for language services.

A robust and realistic business model will be developed in order to phase out reliance on

CEF funding by 2020.


The actions will be funded by procurement and cover a period of up to three years.

Title: Automated Translation


EUR 8 million

Type of financial support: Procurement (one call for tender contract and two specific contracts using framework contracts)

Funding rate: N/A


3 years

28


3.1.8 Cyber Security


Cybersecurity is a challenge shared by all Member States. An efficient and timely

cooperation between public and private stakeholders about risks, vulnerabilities and

threats – especially for critical information infrastructures – is crucial for providing high

levels of cybersecurity in Europe. In times when the occurrence, power, velocity and

complexity of attacks are on the rise, the targets of cyber-attacks need to be able to

respond early enough to prevent or at least to mitigate attacks on their networks and

information systems, as well as for proper recovery and comprehensive follow up.

Currently, a majority of public and private Computer Emergency Response Teams

(CERTs) in the Member States have a purely national reach and are limited in their

European connectivity due – among others – to a lack of maturity in some CERTs and

lack of trusted cooperation between them. As a consequence, Europe does not make full

use of its collective capabilities to improve cyber security.

Therefore, the overall objective of this DSI is the establishment and deployment of a core

cooperation platform, composed of cooperation mechanisms that will enhance the EU-

wide capability for preparedness, cooperation and information exchange, coordination

and response to cyber threats, as defined in the CEF Work Programme 2014 preparatory

activities. Such mechanisms will be used by Member States on a voluntary basis, in order

to strengthen their capacity building and cooperation, involving only those Member

States willing to participate. The cooperation mechanisms will allow for more timely and

effective collaboration between the Member States. In this way, the Member States will

gain a deeper and quicker awareness of ongoing cyber-attacks with an efficient use of

available resources, allowing them to limit the potential economic and political damage

caused by cyber-attacks.

Many technical and organisational aspects of the DSI were already extensively addressed

in prior activities at national and European level and provide for tested and mature

technological solutions, as well as experience with regard to the organisational aspects.

Examples of relevant cooperation projects include the Framework for Information

Sharing and Alerting (FISHA) project, the work of ENISA (e.g. EISAS), the Malware

Information Sharing Platform (MISP) or on-going sector-specific initiatives such as the

DENSEK project in the electricity sector, but are not limited to these.In addition, these

activities are underpinned by the European Strategy for Cyber Security and the Directive

concerning the measures to ensure a high common level of network and information

security across the Union (COM (2013) 48), proposed by the European Commission in

February 2013 (NIS-Directive). The cooperation developed under this DSI will

contribute to the scheme of the CERTs cooperation.


Actions in WP 2015

Building on the preparatory activities of CEF Work Programme 2014, which will be

defining detailed requirements, structure and functionalities, while following a gradual

29

approach, the specific objective for 2015 is to establish and launch a core cooperation

platform, composed of cooperation mechanisms, between the participating Member

States. The cooperation mechanisms will offer baseline capabilities and services as

agreed by the participating Member States under WP 2014, for instance, shared

procedures and toolsets as well as commonly used standards, while simultaneously

supporting participating Member States to make best use of them.

The actions of WP 2015 will set up, launch, maintain and operate cooperation

mechanisms between a group of CERTs as nominated by the Member States,

participating on a voluntary basis, in line with the governance structure and requirements

established under WP 2014, in order to collect, analyse and share knowledge about

vulnerabilities and threats and the use of common procedures and standards to mitigate

them.

In addition, these mechanisms will provide best practice support and other forms of

cooperation to better prevent or mitigate threats; they will build up the maturity of

participating CERTs and foster a culture of trust to support cooperation between them.

These initial activities envisaged under WP2015 will be complemented by generic

services in following CEF work programmes, which will be a combination of national

level software enabling cooperation, procedures and related activities to facilitate the

cross-border cooperation of CERTs.

Their capabilities will gradually develop over time, following the roadmap agreed by the

Member States participating on the cooperation network's governance established under

WP 2014. The mechanisms' scope and work should not be in contradiction of the

provisions of the future NIS-Directive.


The cooperation mechanisms will allow the Member States to limit the economic and

political damage of cyber-attacks, while reducing the overall costs of cyber security for

individual Member States. The DSI will allow Member States to respond early enough to

prevent or at least to mitigate cyber security incidents that may affect their networks and

information systems making European digital networks more secure for their citizens.

Also, this activity will allow the Member States to steer the process, address their own

needs and requirements on a technical and organisational level and to build up gradually

a high level of trust between the participants to enable the establishment of an efficient

and timely cooperation culture, built on existing structures that facilitates the work of the

individual CERTs and adds value to all participants, also by making best use of existing

practices in the Member States.


The participating Member States will be the active drivers in the governance,

implementation and deployment of this DSI, steering the process through the cooperation

network's governance structure established by the activities of WP 2014. The EC and

ENISA will be also involved in the governance, implementation and deployment of this

DSI according to their defined roles under EU law, for instance by supporting the

management of the service at its launching phase, establishing links to other DSIs (such

as eDelivery) where needed and also for channelling and structuring the outreach to the

CERT community and other stakeholders.

30


Building on the outcomes of the preparatory activities of WP2014, the participant

Member States will develop a long-term roadmap for defining the legal status of the

cooperation mechanisms and to define their financial sustainability that may, where

appropriate, include business models for generating financial revenues from outside the

CEF.


The establishment, launch and operation of the cooperation mechanisms will be procured

on the basis of the requirements coming from the preparatory work proposed in the CEF

WP2014 to be defined in 2015 and will cover a period of three years.

Title: Cybersecurity


EUR 7 million

Type of financial support: Procurement (one service contract)

Funding rate: N/A


3 years


'New' Mature DSI's selected on the basis of the criteria established by the Regulation

3.1.9 Access to certificates and attestations – e-Certis (eProcurement)


The new Public Procurement, Directives 2014/25/EU, 2014/24/EU and 2014/23/EU of

the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 March 2014 require Member States to

implement electronic procurement. All Member States have to fulfil eNotification and

eAccess by 2016 and eSubmission by 2018. Electronic invoices have to be accepted by

2020 and Member States have to keep e-Certis up-to-date from 2016. From 2018,

contracting authorities will have to ask primarily for documents listed in e-Certis, which

will become a sort of clearing house for all documents.

The first cross-border service provided within the eProcurement DSI is e-Certis. e-Certis

is a free, on-line source of information designed to help economic operators and

contracting authorities to compare and interpret different forms of documentary evidence

required for cross-border tenders for public contracts. It covers evidentiary documents

requested in the EU, Turkey, Iceland, and Norway (http://ec.europa.eu/markt/e-

Certis/login.do).

In 2014 e-Certis is only provided as a web based tool, a web service will be added to

allow third parties to access the information electronically. This service will add value by

making cross border procurement even easier. The web service will be provided in 2015.

31

e-Certis may be followed by other actions to complete the eProcurement DSI. At the

moment within eSENS, a large scale European project, eTendering is piloted among

several Member States. The main goal of this pilot is to achieve interoperability among

eTendering solutions so that an economic operator is able to use her favourite bidding

tool to communicate with solutions all over Europe. The pilot makes use of several

building blocks within eSENS such as eDelivery, eSignature and eID. Mature results are

expected in 2015 so that this will be one of the next elements in the CEF eProcurement

DSI. Other services that may be considered for 2016 are the European Single

Procurement Document (ESPD) and eOrdering.


Actions in WP 2015

The technical objective is to provide a web service based on the Virtual Company

Dossier (VCD) coming from PEPPOL to e-Certis so that third parties can access to

retrieve information about certifications and attestations. The specification to the web

service will be provided via https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/.

The aim is that eTendering solutions throughout Europe integrate their solutions with e-

Certis to provide easy economic operators and contracting authorities with access to

certifications and attestations.

As e-Certis is just one element of eProcurement, further actions will be added in the

future.. In terms of interoperability the eTendering pilot done within eSENS will play an

important part. Apart from e-Certis, a major role will be played by the European Single

Procurement Document (ESPD) as well as the standard forms from the Publications

Office. In order to promote the uptake and speed up the use of the e-Certis amongst both

public and private entities established in the EU and EEA countries participating the CEF


budget with the purpose of facilitating the verification of national equivalence of the

certificates and attestations required within a public procurement procedure.


Due to the new Public Procurement Directives, e-Certis will become the backbone of

certifications and attestations throughout Europe. This will foster cross-border

procurement immensely.

The web service of e-Certis will lead to better cross border solutions provided to

Contracting Authorities (CAs) and at the same time, will be a facilitator for Economic

Operators submitting cross-border offers. In effect, e-Certis will be an anchor around

which stakeholders will be able to build future eProcurement solutions as well as benefit

from it.

Beside service providers of eTendering solutions, the web service will attract

certifications and attestations service providers as they can align their information more

easily with the e-Certis database.


The core service platform e-Certis is developed, maintained and operated by the

Commission (DG GROW). The platform is managed by DG GROW with the support of

the newly set-up e-Certis editorial team where the relevant representatives of the Member

States meet regularly. While the platform is governed by DG GROW, different

32

stakeholders are already involved in driving the development. Solution providers,

Members of eSENS, CEN/BII and DIGIT work closely together with DG GROW on the

back office while an envisaged e-Certis editor group will provide support in terms of

usability. The new multi-stakeholder group on eProcurement (i.e. EXEP which has been

launched in October 2014) will support the overall governance as well. Their job is to

communicate the current state of play to their Member State and to provide advice to DG

GROW.


As e-Certis is DG GROW key cross-border eProcurement tool mandated by the Public

Procurement Directive the long term sustainability for its maintenance is well

established.


Grants will be offered to entities in Member States which integrate the computer

interface of e-Certis in their existing solution to enable users (contracting authorities

and/or economic operators) to retrieve the information from e-Certis within their

software. Synergies between e-Certis and IMI (Internal Market Information System)

should be exploited.

Title: eProcurement DSI (here e-Certis)


EUR 1.4 million



Duration of the action: 1 year


3.1.10 Online Dispute Resolution


Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) offers a simple, fast and low-cost out-of-court

solution to disputes between consumers and traders and can be also conducted online

(ODR). Ensuring access to simple, fast and low-cost means of resolving domestic and

cross-border disputes, which arise from sales or services contracts, benefits consumers

and traders and boosts their confidence in the Single Market.

In July 2013, a Directive on consumer ADR (2013/11/EU) and a Regulation on consumer

ODR (524/2013) entered into force. The ODR Regulation provides for the establishment

of an EU-wide Online Dispute Resolution platform (ODR platform) to facilitate the

resolution of online contractual disputes between consumers and traders. The ODR

platform will link all national ADR entities, notified to the Commission as provided by

the ADR Directive, and will allow consumers to submit their dispute online and have it

dealt with entirely online by one of the national ADR entities. It will be user-friendly and

will operate in all the official languages of the EU.

33

The development of the DSI started at the end of 2012 and the first version of the ODR

platform was tested by the expert group in October 2013. Tests have confirmed that the

core functions of the ODR platform are in place and ready for deployment.

Further tests were positively carried out in June 2014 and in order to meet a legal

obligation under the ODR Regulation, the Commission will perform a large-scale

validation involving ODR experts as well as consumers' and traders' representatives by

January 2015.


Actions in WP 2015

The 2015 CEF Work Programme will contribute to the deployment of the DSI's core

platform and to its operation and maintenance in the key years after its launch. The core

DSI will start operating in January 2016 and therefore all the deployment and

interoperability effort at Member State level has to be performed in 2014-2015 in order

to be aligned with the official launch of the platform.

In particular, CEF support is intended for the maintenance and further deployment of the

DSI's core service platform and the related generic services:

1. Interoperability between the ODR platform and the national ODR gateways and

ADR entities that operate online will take place. About 15 Member States have

online platforms that could interoperate with the EU ODR platform, provided

they receive assistance to develop this functionality on their side. The

interoperability specifications are already published and the interfaces of the EU

ODR platform are already available.

2. The DSI's technical helpdesk will be set up to provide support to the users, and in

particular to the national ADR entities and the ODR contact points. This technical

helpdesk will contribute to improving the effective usability of the platform.

3. The core service platform will be maintained and operated. This includes

hosting costs;

release and lifecycle management;

technological platform evolution; and load and security testing and fixing.

The DSI will make use of some of the existing CEF building blocks. In particular, it will

integrate automated translation which will allow offering multilingual services to all

users and thus facilitate the resolution process. For this purpose a process has been

launched to "train" the MT engine and enable it to translate efficiently future cases of the

ODR platform. The platform can make use of the eID CEF service to allow consumers

and traders to register with the ODR platform, in order to follow online the treatment of

their case. The eDelivery and eSignature services can also be used to deliver the official

decision of the ADR entity to the consumer and the trader.


The overall objective is to allow all consumers and traders to have their disputes over

online purchases dealt with entirely online, easy to use and multilingual. This will boost

34

e-commerce, particularly across borders, and increase trust of both consumers and traders

in the Single Market, as it will allow them to solve their disputes in a simple, fast and

low-cost manner without going to court.

Consumers will be encouraged to seek redress and to be able turn to a quality ADR entity

to solve their dispute no matter the product or service they bought and no matter where

they bought it. Traders will also benefit by maintaining their business reputation and

good customer relations, while they could be also encouraged to open up their business to

more consumers in more countries. Currently around 60% of EU traders, for example,

do not sell online to other countries due to the perceived difficulties to solve a problem if

something goes wrong. Overall it is estimated that consumers would be able to save 22.5

billion Euro per year thanks to the use of ADR and ODR while businesses can boost their

competitiveness.


The platform will be mainly governed by the Commission (DG JUST) that is in charge of

its development, operation and maintenance, in accordance with the ODR Regulation.

For the technical aspects of the platform, the Commission is assisted by an expert group,

consisting of national authorities, national ADR and ODR entities, business and

consumer representatives as well as representatives from the European Disability Forum.

In addition, as foreseen by the ODR Regulation, a Committee of Member States'

representatives has been established to adopt acts for the implementation of Articles 5

and 7 of the ODR Regulation. For both the expert group and the Committee, there are

existing processes and structures for communication and collaboration. Furthermore, in

line with the ODR Regulation, a network of national ODR contact points will be

established and bi-annual meetings will be held. Finally, a feedback system will be

integrated in the ODR platform to collect users' reviews (consumers and traders) about

the functionalities of the platform.


The European Commission will host and operate the DSI for an indefinite duration, as

provided for by the ODR Regulation.

In the first crucial years when the platform will be launched, CEF is expected to

contribute to the funding of the core platform and support the generic services, as far as

interoperability with national ADR and ODR entities is concerned. The rest of the

funding will be provided through the 2014-2020 Consumer Programme.


The core platform will be procured for a duration of 3 years. Generic services will be

funded through grants with an expected duration of 18 months.

Title: Online Dispute Resolution platform


EUR 5.2 million (EUR 1 million for generic services and EUR 4.2 million for the core platform)

Type of financial support: Procurement (2 specific contracts under existing framework contract) Call for proposals - grants

Funding rate: 75% of the total eligible costs for grants (generic services)

35

N/A for core platform

Duration of the action: 3 years


3.1.11 eHealth


The objective established by the eHealth Network in line with the Directive on patients'

rights in cross-border healthcare (2011/24) is to facilitate the cooperation and the

exchange of information among Member States, to work towards delivering sustainable

European eHealth systems and services and interoperable applications. A further

objective is to support Member States in developing common identification and

authentication measures to facilitate transferability of data in cross-border healthcare.

The eHealth Network endorsed four eHealth services to be part of the CEF. Two of these

services have been piloted on a large scale (epSOS9/EXPAND

10 and e-SENS

11) as well

as a third one (the IT platform for European Reference Networks) are identified as

meeting the eligibility criteria in 2015:

Cross-border patient summary service:

When a citizen makes an unplanned cross-border healthcare visit to a health provider

in the European Union, the health professional will have access to the person's Patient

Summary and other relevant Electronic Health Record documents. The eHealth

Network adopted Guidelines on minimum/non exhaustive patient summary dataset

for electronic exchange in accordance with the cross-border Directive 2011/24/EU

(Patient Summary12

guidelines). These guidelines and their successors should be a

primary reference for CEF deployments.

Cross-border ePrescription and eDispensation service:

ePrescriptions and eDispensations support the concept that a patient being abroad can

receive the equivalent medication treatment that he would receive in his home

country. The eHealth Network adopted the ePrescriptions 13

guidelines in November

2014. These guidelines and their successors should be a primary reference for CEF

deployments.

The patient summary and ePrescription/Dispensation services will, to the extent it is

feasible, reuse building blocks: eID/eSignature and a version of eDelivery that

supports the functionality of the eInteraction building block of eHealth. Automatic

translation of free text in eHRs and ePrescriptions, which is not part of epSOS

9 http://www.epsos.eu/

10 http://www.expandproject.eu/

11 http://www.esens.eu/

12 http://ec.europa.eu/health/ehealth/docs/guidelines_patient_summary_en.pdf

13 http://ec.europa.eu/health/ehealth/docs/eprescription_guidelines_en.pdf

36

services today, will be carefully considered in the future. Coded information will

always be transcoded and translated through the use of terminologies and

vocabularies. The possibility to integrate cross border eInvoicing, which is not part of

epSOS services today, should also be considered. The building blocks will need to

support the requirements of the eHealth Domain.

IT platform for European Reference Networks:

Directive 2011/24/EU provides for cooperation in the specific areas where the

economies of scale of coordinated action between all Member States can bring

significant added value to national health systems. This is the case for European

Reference Networks, as the objectives of the Networks set in Article 12 of the

Directive – e.g. European co-operation on highly specialised healthcare, pooling of

knowledge, improvement of diagnosis and care in medical domains where expertise

is rare, helping Member States with insufficient number of patients to provide highly

specialised care - cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States by

themselves and can be better achieved at Union level.

Establishing European Reference Networks will help to provide affordable, high-

quality and cost-effective healthcare and to improve these patients' access to the best

possible expertise and care available in the EU for their condition. Implementation

WP 2015

Actions in WP 2015

Building on the existing deployed infrastructure (epSOS, e-SENS, national) CEF support

is intended to deploy Patient Summary and ePrescription services on large scale, as

defined in the relevant guidelines adopted by the eHealth Network and in specifications

issued by the epSOS, EXPAND, and e-SENS projects. The immediate objective of the

actions launched in 2015 is to establish a solid technical and organizational infrastructure

for both services, providing an initial set of facilities and then extending them gradually.

This infrastructure will be deployed in the countries (initially 12-15) which will be able

to demonstrate their readiness and maturity to deploy the DSIs. Countries who were

approved to pilot within the epSOS or the e-SENS project are natural candidates for

initial deployments.

As regard the ERN, the immediate objective is to set up a central ICT platform to allow

the cross-border interconnection of reference networks. The ICT platform will be made

up of generic modules that will adapted for the different thematic fields of the ERN.

Core services

Build on common identification and authentication measures for patients and health

care professionals.

Establish processes to routinely access professional registration databases and to

involve eHealth NCPs in confirming the validity of a prescription.

Specifications and guidelines management

Architecture and general building blocks of the ERN IT Platform: tools for:

o Exchange of clinical information and patient data

o Communication and conferencing

o Clinical decision making

o Training and e-learning

o Research

37

Information system and Key Performance Indicators tools maintenance, distribution

and evolutions of relevant specifications, guidelines, policies and audits (including

the Patient Summary and ePrescription Guidelines adopted by the eHealth Network)

related to the four interoperability layers (legal, organisational, semantic, technical)

and to security.

Maintenance and adaptation of the ICT generic modules and solutions to the thematic

fields14

of the different ERNs

Operations

o Hosting of central services (e.g. Trust & Connectivity, Terminologies);.

o Trust & Connectivity Services: Connections Management.

o OpenNCP Technology: to maintain and manage releases of the reference

implementation of eHealth NCP compliant with the epSOS/EXPAND ;

o Testing and Validation Services: technological compliance verification

mechanisms;

o Support services and central service desk

o NCP Gateway development and deployment according to the relevant

specifications

o Central Terminology Service management:

The process to build, operate and manage the Master Value Set

Catalogue / Master Translation Transcoding Catalogue (MVC/MTC).

Support for the adoption of the selected standard coding systems at

national level.

To handle the terminologies including the editing / approval

workflows

Provide MS the tools for Terminologies Management in order to allow

national semantic experts to manage terminologies and translations.

Generic services

Legal, security and organizational guidelines

MS level implementation/localization.

Audits on identified requirements in line with the centrally defined policies.

Technical

o Deploy, test and operate the eHealth NCP, connect with national

infrastructure

o NCP Quality Assurance

o National Service Desk service for end users

Semantic

o MVC/MTC Management and maintenance: Translate MVC terminologies;

o Map national specific terminologies to the Master Value Catalogue (MVC);

o Evaluation on the possible adoption at national level of the standard code

systems and value sets included in the MVC.

14 Auto-immune and auto inflammatory diseases; bone diseases; cancers and tumours; cardiac diseases; connective

tissue and musculoskeletal diseases; malformations and developmental anomalies and rare intellectual disabilities;

endocrine diseases; eye diseases; gastrointestinal diseases; gynaecological and obstetric diseases; haematological

diseases; head and neck diseases; hepatic diseases; hereditary metabolic disorders; multi-systemic vascular

diseases; neurological diseases; neuromuscular diseases; pulmonary diseases; renal diseases; skin disorders;

urogenital diseases

38

Other Core or Generic services could be added if relevant and justified for the provision

of the final services.

Integration with existing building bloc DSIs

The feasibility and specification of the integration of eID/eSignature and the version of

eDelivery that supports the functionality of the eInteraction building block of eHealth,

with eHealth cross border services, will be done by the eSense project, which is due to

end in 2016. Once the pilot will have proved its feasibility, the integration will occur

according to the final eSense specifications of the eHealth pilot, starting in 2017.


Overall, in line with the objectives of Directive 2011/24, the deployment of eHealth

solutions shall increase safety and quality of care throughout the EU, notably by:

providing immediate clinical information needed in an emergency situation

abroad

ensuring continuity of care across borders

collecting and consolidating clinical data across borders to support public health

and research

The specific benefits resulting from the implementation of the proposed services are:

Patient summary: when a citizen makes an unplanned cross-border healthcare visit to a

health provider in the European Union, both patient and health professional may have

access to the person's Patient Summary and other relevant Electronic Health Record

documents as smoothly as at home.

ePrescription: it will allow a patient who is abroad to receive medical treatment which is

equivalent to the one that he would receive in his home country. The objectives are to

allow dispensation of ePrescriptions across Europe and support the documentation of

dispensed drugs. Patient safety while staying abroad will be increased since an electronic

prescription can be automatically translated. Using Dispensation data from the dispensing

pharmacy in the country of temporary stay, the health services in the home country can

update the medication record of the patient, making health care and prescriptions safer.

Although reimbursement services are out of scope of the epSOS eDispensation service,

some characteristics of the service could assist patients in their reimbursement claims.

ERN IT platform: The implementation of this core service will provide all the healthcare

providers, members of a European Reference Network, with the capacity to communicate

and exchange medical information in a similar manner as if the professionals were

working in the same physical environment by means of virtual tools and eHealth

solutions. Patients will have access and a substantial involvement in the management of

their data and will benefit from the guidelines and patient oriented information and tools

related with their own care and outcomes. The networking dimension and in particular

the IT tools and eHealth solutions are key elements for the success of the European

Reference Networks.

The service aims to improve the exchange of expertise and clinical data through the

network and across the EU; allow the swift and smooth contact between providers and

between patients and providers at a distance and to maintain and support

collaborative/cooperative actions and systems

39

The service will allow healthcare professionals to strongly interact and cooperate on

clinical cases by:

Multi-disciplinary virtual boards (e.g. tumour boards) (multilateral connection)

Bilateral consultation between two centres

Transmission of and consultation on clinical images (XRay, scans, pathology etc.)

Tele-consultation involving patients

Interactive production of guidelines, technical documents etc

Diagnosis support tools: Shared decision trees/other diagnostic tools

libraries of technical documents

Training and at distance learning activities

Research activities: shared protocols for clinical trials, shared databases


Core services will be managed by the Commission (DIGIT for common building blocks,

SANTE for specific eHealth components) which will launch call for tenders and calls for

proposals to subcontract or allocate different activities and tasks to different entities.

Management decisions with policy relevance will be submitted to the eHealth Network

for approval. eHealth specifications and guidelines will be governed by the Commission

and the eHealth Network, directly or by an ad hoc subgroup. Other stakeholders, such as

SDOs, experts, fora, consortia, representative organisations (patients, SDOs) will also be

engaged through Joint Actions or projects.

Activities to promote the use of the ERN IT platform for research will be coordinated

with the efforts carried out by the pan-European ESFRI research infrastructures such as,

e.g., ECRIN (European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network) and ELIXIR

(European Life-science Infrastructure for Biological Information).


The post-CEF sustainability of the services needs to be addressed by the eHealth

Network. A business plan will be provided for the individual specific services, with the

support of an H2020 project on eHealth business modelling. The business model of DSIs

such as Patient Summary and ePrescription can evolve rapidly, from today's public

funding to other business models with increasing private funding through insurances,

health care providers, or private operators. Consideration will be given to a range of

approaches in which services might alternatively be paid for and/or operational costs

defrayed, of a pay per use fee introduced. Given the regional organization of some

Member State's health systems, the use of structural funds may be explored.

The formal reimbursement process of the services provided by the members of the

Networks (including telemedicine and other eHealth services), as provided by Regulation

883/2004 of Social Security and Directive of Cross border Healthcare are expected to

cover the cost of the healthcare services. Other substantial source of financial support to

the Networks will come through the Public Health Programme 2014-20 which includes

specific goals and funding mechanism to support the implementation of the ERNs.

Structural funds, and in particular the European Regional Development Fund to

European territorial cooperation goal may be an additional source of support for the set

up and the sustainability of reference networks by cross border, transnational and

interregional cooperation projects.

40


In general the operation, maintenance, distribution and evolutions of relevant

specifications, guidelines policies and audits of the core platform will be procured, while

generic services will be funded through grants over a duration of four years. Member

States will decide to apply for funding the deployment of generic services on the basis of

the maturity of their own eHealth deployments. It is to be noted that the indicative budget

for 2015 below is substantially lower than the amount claimed by the Member States in

the eHealth Network (28.6M€), due to budgetary restrictions.

Title: Patient Summary and ePrecription/eDispensation – Core and Generic Services and IT platform for European Reference Networks – Core Services


EUR 15 Million (EUR 7.5 million for generic services and EUR 7.5 million for the core platform)

Type of financial support: Procurement (a maximum of 10 specific contracts under existing framework contract) Call for proposals - grants

Funding rate: 75% of the total eligible costs for grants (generic services) N/A for core platform

Duration of the action: 4 years

Indicative publication date: Q4 2015 for the Call for Proposals (generic services) and for the Call for Tender (core services)

3.2 Broadband


CEF Broadband seeks to contribute to the Digital Agenda target of all European

households having access to internet connections. CEF thus aims at facilitating an

efficient flow of private and public investments to stimulate the deployment and

modernisation of broadband networks.

The legal base stipulates that throughout the entire multiannual financial framework

period (2014-2020), 15 % of the CEF Telecom budget shall be allocated to Broadband.

At least one third of the broadband projects financially supported under CEF shall aim at

speeds above 100Mbps.

The legal base further prescribes that projects can only be funded through financial

instruments, i.e. debt (e. g. loans, guarantees, project bonds instrument) or equity (e. g. a

fund). As mentioned above, financial instruments for broadband will be covered in a

separate work programme covering all three sectors of the CEF.

Projects of common interest will be supported by horizontal actions, including studies

and programme support actions, further referred to as ‘technical assistance’. The main

objective of technical assistance will be to facilitate the efficient flow of private and

public investments into broadband projects.

Technical assistance will help make projects ready for potential financial assistance

under CEF, inter alia, by assisting in building an efficient business plan and by

41

aggregating broadband actions towards a project volume exceeding the threshold for

project appraisal by the EIB and other financial institutions.


Actions in WP 2015

The Commission, together with the World Bank as a partner institution will set up a

facility for CEF broadband technical assistance, with the aim of facilitating access to

financial instruments established under the CEF by project promoters identified in the

framework of Connected Communities Initiative.

For this purpose, the Commission will make a financial contribution of up to € 900 000

and covering a period of one year.

Direct award of the grant to the World Bank is justified by the synergies with the

following competences of the World Bank:

Extensive experience in, and proven capacity for, providing high-quality

analytical and advisory services, including technical assistance services in ICT;

Experience in operational and advisory support in the telecommunications sector;

Strong background in lending operations, i.a. through low-interest and interest-

free loans, including lending operations for infrastructure projects;

Alignment of interest and positive track record in the cooperation with the

European Commission.

The facility will be set up by providing a grant to the World Bank on the basis of Article

190(1)(f) of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 1268/2012 on the rules of

application of Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 966/2012 of the European Parliament and of

the Council on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union to set up

this technical assistance facility.

The award of this grant is subject to award criteria provided for in Annex 2a.

The maximum rate of Union financing will be 75%.

However, if no agreement is reached with the World Bank on the establishment of the

technical assistance facility or if the budget for technical assistance is not fully

committed to the World Bank, the Commission may provide technical assistance through

procurement.

In this case, a call for tenders would be launched in Q1 2015. The indicative number of

contracts is 1 – 2.


CEF broadband will benefit citizens, SMEs and larger enterprises by contributing to

financing their connection to broadband internet. It is also expected that the programme

will indirectly benefit further citizens and enterprises facilitating the investments of other

private and public funds, such as the European Structural and Investment Funds.

The expected benefit of technical assistance for broadband will include the provision of

know-how and the sharing of best practices, in particular to project promoters from the

public sector and/or with limited experience in the broadband infrastructure sector.

42


The technical assistance facility will be set up with the World Bank as partner institution.

The World Bank will participate in the evaluation of the responses to the call for

expression of interest under the framework of the Connected Communities Initiative and

will provide technical assistance to successful project promoters.

However, if no agreement is reached with the World Bank on the establishment of the

technical assistance facility or if the budget for technical assistance is not fully

committed to the World Bank, the Commission may provide technical assistance through

procurement.


The CEF technical assistance facility will be set up by providing a grant under direct

management in the meaning of Article 190(1)(f) of Commission Delegated Regulation

(EU) No 1268/2012.

Technical assistance may also be provided in the form of procurement if no agreement is

reached with the World Bank or if the budget for technical assistance is not fully

committed to the World Bank.

Title: Broadband


€ 900 000

Type of financial support: Grant

Funding rate: 75% of the eligible costs

Duration of the action: 1 year

Indicative signature of the grant agreement:

Q2 2015

43

4 IMPLEMENTATION

4.1 Main implementation measures and EU financial

contribution

The different nature and specificities of the DSI detailed in Section 3 require distinctive

implementation measures. Each of these will therefore be achieved either through calls

for proposals resulting in grant agreements, or through procurement actions as specified

in Section 3.

For all the measures implemented via calls for proposals, the EU funding is granted in

accordance with the principles of co-financing and non-profit for the funded activities in

compliance with the European Union Framework for State Aid for Research and

Development and Innovation15

. EU grants will be calculated on the basis of eligible

costs. Details of eligible costs can be found in the model grant agreement. The financial

assistance will respect the 75% maximum co-financing rate limit of the CEF Regulation.

Specific eligibility criteria will be specified in the calls for proposals.

4.2 Procurement

Procurement actions will be carried out in compliance with the applicable EU public

procurement rules. As per Section 3 of this Work Programme, procurement can be

achieved either through direct calls for tenders or by using existing framework contracts.

4.3 Calls for proposals

4.3.1 General terms and provisions

Proposals must be submitted by one or more Member States or, with the agreement16

of

the Member States concerned, by international organisations, joint undertakings, or

public or private undertakings or bodies established in Member States.

European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries which are members of the European

Economic Area (EEA) may also participate17

in accordance with the conditions laid

down in the EEA Agreement. Therefore, even when not explicitly mentioned in the WP

text, it is intended that all calls for proposal are opened also to EEA countries based on

the Decisions taken by the EEA Joint Committee18

, with the same rights and obligations

as a Member State.

15 OJ C 323, 30.12.2006, p. 1.

16 As indicated in Art.9.1 of the CEF Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 1316/2013 of the European Parliament and of

the Council of 11 December 2013 establishing the Connecting Europe Facility, amending Regulation (EU) No

913/2010 and repealing Regulations (EC) No 680/2007 and (EC) No 67/2010).

17 According to article 7.2 of Regulation (EU) No 283/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11

March 2014 on guidelines for trans-European networks in the area of telecommunications infrastructures and

repealing Decision No 1336/97/EC.

18 At the moment of writing these are Norway and Iceland.

44

Also acceding States and candidate countries benefiting from a pre-accession strategy

may participate in the sector of the CEF covering telecommunications infrastructure in

accordance with agreements signed with the Union19

.

Proposals may be submitted by entities which do not have legal personality under the

applicable national law, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake

legal obligations on their behalf and offer a guarantee for the protection of the Union’s

financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.

Proposals submitted by natural persons will not be eligible.

Where necessary to achieve the objectives of a given project of common interest and

where duly motivated, third countries and entities established in third countries may

participate in actions contributing to the projects of common interest. They may not

receive funding under this Regulation, except where it is indispensable to achieve the

objectives of a given project of common interest.

4.3.2 Making a proposal

Proposals should be submitted in accordance with the procedure defined in the call text.

Guidelines for Applicants containing full details on how to make a proposal will be

available from the CEF website (http://inea.ec.europa.eu/en/cef/cef_telecom/).

4.3.3 Evaluation process

The evaluation of proposals will be based on the principles of transparency and equal

treatment. It will be carried out by the Commission with the assistance of independent

experts. Three sets of criteria (eligibility, award and selection) will be applied to each

submitted proposal. The three sets of criteria are described in detail in Annex 2 of this

Work Programme).

Only proposals meeting the requirements of the eligibility criteria will be evaluated

further.

Each of the eligible proposals will be evaluated against the award criteria, while each

individual applicant must demonstrate their financial and operational capacity to carry

out the proposed action or work programme.

Proposals responding to a specific DSI as defined in Section 3 of this Work Programme

will be evaluated both individually and comparatively. The comparative assessment of

proposals will cover all proposals responding to the same DSI Generic Services call.

Proposals that achieve a score greater than or equal to the threshold will be ranked within

the objective. These rankings will determine the order of priority for funding. Following

evaluation of award criteria, the Commission establishes an implementation plan taking

into account the scores and ranking of the proposals, the programme priorities and the

available budget. This implementation plan will include proposals to be invited for

negotiation, a reserve list of proposals to be negotiated should budget become available,

and a list of proposals that are to be rejected either for lack of budget or lack of quality

(failure to meet one or more of the award criteria thresholds).

19 At the moment of writing, no country has agreements in place for participation on CEF. The general third country

consideration applies.

45

The coordinators of all the submitted proposals are informed in writing about the

outcome of the evaluation for their proposal.

4.3.4 Selection of independent experts for evaluation and reviews

The Commission will select independent experts to assist with the evaluation of

proposals and with the review of project results as well as for other purposes where

specific expertise might be required for implementation of the Programme. Experts are

invited to apply using the mechanisms and tools provided for in the H2020 FP20

and a list

of experts appropriate to the requirements of the Programme will be established. Experts

will be selected from this list on the basis of their ability to perform the tasks assigned to

them, taking into account the thematic requirements of the call or project, and with

consideration of geographical and gender balance.

4.3.5 Indicative implementation calendar

The indicative calendar for the implementation of CEF Telecom calls in 2015 is shown in

the table below. The Commission expects to issue calls for proposals in accordance with

this 2015 Work Programme.

4.4 Technical assistance for broadband

Technical assistance will mainly target individual projects and will include the

identification of needs, assistance in carrying out feasibility and mapping studies, legal

advice regarding procurement or state aid, where relevant, and the further definition of

the business and financing plans.

Such projects will enlarge the pool of initiatives prepared and able to enter into the due

diligence process of the financial partner(s) for support through the CEF financial

instrument.

The technical assistance facility will also seek to aggregate relatively small individual

projects into larger clusters, thereby contributing to their bankability. As compared to

other programs, CEF is specific in that it supports only infrastructure projects deploying

mature, state-of-the-art technology.

20 http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/experts/index.html

Date Event

October 2015 1st Call for Proposals opens

November 2015 2nd

Call for Proposals opens

January 2016 Call1 closes

February 2016 Evaluation of Call1 proposals

March 2016 Call2 closes

April2016 Evaluation of Call2 proposals

Q2 2016 Signature of grant agreements related to Call1

Q3 2016 Signature of grant agreements related to Call2

46

Technical assistance may also include the development of targeted knowledge products,

such as toolkits and technical reports, which will raise awareness of potential project

promoters, enhance their expertise and attract them to the facility and thus facilitate the

implementation of CEF broadband projects.

In the implementation of the technical assistance, amongst other criteria, the obligation to

allocate one third of CEF broadband to projects delivering 100 Mb per second will be

taken into account.

Technical assistance established under this work programme will be provided exclusively

to promoters of projects identified under the framework of the Connected Communities

Initiative.

47

5 PROGRAMME SUPPORT ACTIONS

5.1 Studies, other measures, conferences and events

The legal bases foresee the possibility for studies and programme support actions in the

field of broadband and digital service infrastructures aimed at maximising the impact of

the EU intervention. Horizontal actions for 2015 will cover costs including preparation,

evaluation, monitoring and studies. An amount of funding will be set aside to cover

awareness and dissemination as it is crucial to effectively communicate about the value

and benefits of CEF.

Studies

Broadband coverage,

Broadband retail prices

Broadband mobile prices

Long-term governance and sustainability of CEF Telecom Service Infrastructure.

Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS). One of the tasks for 2015 is

to identify and propose a security model for the interconnection of business

registers that would respond to the business, technical and legal requirements of

BRIS.

The Commission plans to procure via framework contracts and call for tenders

indicatively 6 study contracts. The calls for tenders (or use of framework contracts) are

indicatively planned to be launched in the second and third calendar quarter of 2015.

Other

- Conferences and workshops to engage with relevant stakeholders.

- Support to "TENtec information system: Extension of the computerised data information

system for the TEN-T and CEF transport (TENtec), to CEF telecoms involving all

stakeholders, providing an interactive beneficiary platform.

The above mentioned actions will be implemented through calls for tenders. An

indicative number of 5 direct service contracts are expected. The calls for tenders are

planned to be launched in the second and third calendar quarter of 2015.

In addition, support will be provided to evaluation and project reviews21

, including Safer

Internet running projects.

The total budget allocated to ‘studies, other measures, conferences and events’ is EUR

1.3 million.

21 In accordance with Article 204 of the Financial Regulation

48

6 FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information relating to this programme, please refer to the CEF Telecom

website at https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/connecting-europe-facility.

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/connecting-europe-facility

49

ANNEXES

Annex 1 – Call for proposal fiches

Call identifier: CEF-TC-2015-1

Opening date: 22 October 201522

Closing date: 19 January 2016, at 17:00, Brussels local time23

Indicative budget: EUR 38.5 million

Subject area: eDelivery, eInvoicing, Public Open Data, Safer Internet Generic

Services; Europeana Core Service Platform

Eligibility and admissibility conditions: The conditions are described in Annex 2 to

this Work Programme

Evaluation criteria, scoring and threshold: The criteria, scoring and threshold are

described in Annex 2 to this Work Programme.

Call identifier: CEF-TC-2015-2

Opening date: 17 November 201521

Closing date: 15 March 2016, at 17:00, Brussels local time22

Indicative budget: EUR 16.9 million

Subject area: eProcurement, eHealth, Online Dispute Resolution and Electronic

identification and authentication - eIdentification and eSignature - Generic Services

Eligibility and admissibility conditions: The conditions are described in Annex 2 to

this Work Programme

Evaluation criteria, scoring and threshold: The criteria, scoring and threshold are

described in Annex 2 to this Work Programme.

22 The Director-General responsible for the call may publish it up to one month prior of after the envisaged date of

publication.

23 At the time of publication of the call, the Director-General responsible may delay this deadline by up to one

month.

50

Annex 2 - Evaluation criteria for the Calls for Proposals

Admissibility conditions

To be considered admissible, a proposal must be:

– Submitted on time: proposals must arrive at the Commission by the date and time and

at the address specified in the relevant call for proposals. Proposals must be submitted

as specified in the same call: either electronically or on paper. The call deadline is a

deadline for receipt of proposals (in the case of proposals submitted by post or courier

services it is the date of sending by applicants).

– Complete: this includes the requested administrative data, the signature of the

applicant(s), all application form parts, the proposal description, and any supporting

document specified in the call including the agreement of Member State or other

country participating to the programme concerned as indicated in Art.9.1 of the CEF

Regulation24

. Incomplete proposals may be considered as inadmissible.

Eligibility criteria

Proposals will be eligible if they meet the following criteria:

– Consortium composition. The composition of the proposing consortium complies with

the requirements set out in this Work Programme. Submission by legal persons (as

referred to in section 4.3.1).

Exclusion criteria

– Applicants must certify that they are not in any of the situations listed below:

i. they are bankrupt or being wound up, are having their affairs administered by the

courts, have entered into an arrangement with creditors, have suspended business

activities, are the subject of proceedings concerning those matters, or are in any

analogous situation arising from a similar procedure provided for in national

legislation or regulations;

ii. they or persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control over

them have been convicted of an offence concerning their professional conduct by a

judgment of a competent authority of a Member State which has the force of res

judicata;

iii. they have been guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means

which the contracting authority can justify including by decisions of the EIB and

international organisations;

iv. they are not in compliance with their obligations relating to the payment of social

security contributions or the payment of taxes in accordance with the legal

provisions of the country in which they are established or with those of the country

of the contracting authority or those of the country where the contract is to be

performed;

24 Regulation (EU) No 1316/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2013 establishing

the Connecting Europe Facility, amending Regulation (EU) No 913/2010 and repealing Regulations (EC) No

680/2007 and (EC) No 67/2010.

51

v. they or persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control over

them have been the subject of a judgment which has the force of res judicata for

fraud, corruption, involvement in a criminal organisation, money laundering or any

other illegal activity, where such illegal activity is detrimental to the Union’s

financial interests;

vi. they are subject to a financial or administrative penalty referred to in Article

109(1) of the Financial Regulation;

vii. they are subject to a conflict of interests;

viii. they are guilty of misrepresenting the information required by the contracting

authority as a condition of participation in the procurement procedure or have

failed to supply that information.

Proposals failing to meet the above criteria are not accepted for further evaluation.

Selection criteria

Applicants must demonstrate their financial and operational capacity to carry out the

proposed action.

Award criteria

The proposals will be evaluated on the basis of the criteria ‘Relevance’, ‘Quality and

efficiency of the implementation’ and ‘Impact’, further described below:

Relevance

– Alignment with the objectives and activities required for the deployment of the Digital

Service Infrastructure described in Chapter 3 of the work programme.

– Alignment and synergies with relevant policies, strategies and activities at European

and national level.

Quality and efficiency of the implementation

– Maturity of the proposed solution (e.g. in terms of contribution towards

interoperability, connectivity, sustainable deployment, operation, upgrading of trans-

European digital service infrastructures, use of common building blocks, coordination

at European level) and/or integration with existing components of the DSI,

– Coherence and effectiveness of the work plan, including appropriateness of the

allocation of tasks and resources.

– Quality and relevant experience of the individual participants and, if more than one

beneficiary, of the consortium as a whole (including complementarity, balance).

– Extent to which the proposal demonstrates support from national authorities, industry

and NGOs (when relevant).

– Appropriate attention to security, privacy, inclusiveness and accessibility (when

relevant).

Impact and sustainability

– Quality of the approach to facilitate wider deployment and take-up of the proposed

actions.

52

– Capability to survive, develop and scale up without European Union funding after the

end of the project with a view to achieving long-term sustainability, where appropriate

through funding sources other than CEF.

A score will be applied to each of the three award criteria. If a proposal fails to achieve

one or more of the threshold scores (see below), feedback will be provided to the

consortium on the reason(s) for failure.

Proposals that are outside the scope of the Work Programme objectives will be marked

‘0’ for the Relevance criterion — with the comment ‘out of scope of the call’; they will

not be further evaluated.

For each award criterion a score from 0 to 5 is given (half points possible):

0. the proposal fails to address the criterion under examination or cannot be

judged due to missing or incomplete information.

1. Very poor: The criterion is addressed in an inadequate manner, or there are

serious inherent weaknesses.

2. Not satisfactory: While the proposal broadly addresses the criterion, there are

significant weaknesses.

3. Good: The proposal addresses the criterion well, although improvements

would be necessary.

4. Very Good: The proposal addresses the criterion very well, although certain

improvements are still possible.

5. Excellent: The proposal successfully addresses all relevant aspects of the

criterion in question. Any shortcomings are minor.

Scoring: unless otherwise specified in the call conditions:

For all proposals, each criterion will be scored out of 5. The threshold for individual

criteria will be 3. The overall threshold, applying to the sum of the three individual

scores, will be 10.

Priority order for proposals with the same score

Unless the call conditions indicate otherwise, the following method will be applied:

At the end of the evaluation by independent experts, all the proposals under evaluation

for a same call will be ranked, according to the scores obtained for of each of the award

criteria as indicated above.

If necessary, a priority order for proposals which have obtained the same score within a

ranked list will be determined. Whether or not such a prioritisation is carried out will

depend on the available budget or other conditions set out in the call text. The following

approach will be applied successively for every group of ex aequo proposals requiring

prioritisation, starting with the highest scored group, and continuing in descending order:

53

i. Proposals submitted by organisations established in an eligible country which is

not otherwise covered by more highly-ranked proposals, will be considered to

have the highest priority (geographical coverage).

ii. The proposals identified under (i), if any, will themselves be prioritised according

to the scores they have been awarded for the criterion relevance. When these

scores are equal, priority will be based on scores for the criterion impact and

sustainability.

If a distinction still cannot be made, a further prioritisation can be done by considering

the overall project portfolio and the creation of positive synergies between projects, or

other factors related to the objectives of the call or to CEF in general. These factors will

be documented in the evaluation report..

54

Annex 2a. Award criteria for the grant to the World Bank on the

basis of Article 190(1)(f) of Commission Delegated Regulation

(EU) No 1268/2012

The proposal from the World Bank will be evaluated on the basis of the criteria

‘Relevance’, ‘Quality and efficiency of the implementation’ and ‘Impact’, further

described below:

Relevance

– Alignment with the objectives and activities of the Connected Europe Facility in the

area of broadband.

– Alignment and synergies with broadband policies, strategies and activities at

European and national level.

– Alignment with the Connected Communities initiative.

Quality and efficiency of the implementation

– Maturity of the proposed solution, in terms of contribution to the objectives of

Technical Assistance Facility, as demonstrated in particular by the capacity of

building the pipeline of projects for CEF financial instruments.

– Coherence and effectiveness of the work plan, including appropriateness of the

allocation of tasks and resources.

– Quality and relevant experience of the beneficiary.

Impact and sustainability

– Quality of the approach to facilitate wider deployment and take-up of the proposed

actions.

A score will be applied to each of the three award criteria. If a proposal fails to achieve

one or more of the threshold scores, feedback will be provided to the World Bank on the

reason(s) for failure.

For each award criterion a score from 0 to 5 is given (half points possible):

0. the proposal fails to address the criterion under examination or cannot be

judged due to missing or incomplete information.

1. Very poor: The criterion is addressed in an inadequate manner, or there are

serious inherent weaknesses.

2. Not satisfactory: While the proposal broadly addresses the criterion, there are

significant weaknesses.

3. Good: The proposal addresses the criterion well, although improvements

would be necessary.

4. Very Good: The proposal addresses the criterion very well, although certain

improvements are still possible.

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5. Excellent: The proposal successfully addresses all relevant aspects of the

criterion in question. Any shortcomings are minor.

The respective thresholds for the award criteria are:

Criterion Threshold

A1 3

A2 3

A3 3

Based on the scores of the individual award criteria, a total score will be calculated.

Minimum threshold shall be 10 points.

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Annex 3 – Conformity with the legal base

The DSI and Broadband objectives described in Sections 3 and 5 refer to the kind of

actions that can be provided for under the CEF Telecomm as defined in Art. 4 of the CEF

Regulation.

Documents

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